Emerging Issues in Cyber Security for Institutions of Higher Education

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Institutions of higher learning find themselves engaged in an expensive defense race in buying current security tools and changing their strategies in countering latest cyber security attacks. These strategies are meant to promote operational protection and response to potential attacks on their cyberspace. In the meantime, the attackers are continuously finding ways around those set tools and are able to switch their strategies to hit their different targets. This paper therefore looks at ways through which these organizations are attacked, the extent of the attacks and how the institutions of higher learning can prepare and defend themselves against cyber-attacks. Systematic Literature Review was used to dig deeper to the existing secondary data. It was indeed discovered that Institutions of higher learning are frequently attacked and infiltrated for reasons such as modification of data such as school fees etc. by both internal agents such as students and staff and external agents such as competitors and malicious attackers. We finally make recommendations on what such institutions should do to defend themselves against such attacks.

Published In : IJCSN Journal Volume 8, Issue 4

Date of Publication : August 2019

Pages : 371-379

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Mayieka Jared Maranga : is a PhD student at Kabarak University- Kenya. He holds a Master of Science in Information Technology degree [2012] and Bachelor of Business Information Technology [2009] from Strathmore University; He has worked as: a graduate assistant at Strathmore University (2009 - 2012), an assistant lecturer at Strathmore University's Faculty of Information Technology (2012 - 2014), adjunct faculty as United States International University's School of Science and Technology (2015 - 2016) and an assistant lecturer at Africa International University (2016 to date). His current research interests are generally around Computer Security and Audit and Databases.

Masese Bogomba Nelson : holds PhD from Kibabii University Kenya. He is currently a lecturer in Information Technology at Kabarak University Kenya. His research interests include mobile applications, security and IoT.

cyber security, cybercrime, cyber ethics, social media, & cloud computing

Institutions of higher learning in Kenya and indeed in Africa and the globe in general are facing highly increasing cyber-threats.

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